Even smart people make mistakes;sometimes surprisingly large ones. A current example is drug legalization, which way too many smart people consider a good idea.

They offer three bad arguments.

First, they contend, the drug war has failed despite years of effort we have been unable to reduce the drug problem. Actually, as imperfect as surveys may be, they present overwhelming evidence that the drug problem is growing smaller and has fallen in response to known, effective measures.

I am Libertarian on the subject, but I am personally against the use of most drugs. As a recovering alcoholic and a former pot smoker, I can say that neither does anything positive for your life. I’ve destroyed relationships and careers with booze and pot, and being clean and sober now for 2 years, I can say definitively that life is better without.

I didn’t go through rehab, but I would support redirecting funds currently going toward “fighting” the war on drugs to rehab program subsidies for those who truly need it.

4
posted on 05/01/2012 1:18:45 PM PDT
by rarestia
(It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)

I don’t agree with legalization of hard drugs but things like pot should never have been made illegal. Also what this article really needs to address is all the freedoms we’ve lost due to the “war on drugs” and why Mexico is melting down because of cartels made rich off the drugs that we buy. The unintended (or maybe intended) consequences of the war on drugs is not worth it in my opinion. However, if you like the police state that we live in then party on!

For me, legalizing drugs is about limiting government. I don’t expect government to keep me safe from my own stupidity. I’m royally tired of the gazillions of agencies running around minding my business. It’s time for it to stop & drug laws are a good place to make it stop.

I would agree that better education might reduce the need for interdiction.

There are still not enough people making the leap between Sinead O'Connor's pot parties, and Sinead O'Connor's bipolar disease. The Harvard studies pinpoint the causative effect, but the claim that pot is no more harmful than alcohol still resonates in society.

I'd be for showing middle school and high school students, some graphic videos on the effects of drug addiction as well as what addiction to alcohol does to your liver and your relationships.

I would agree that better education might reduce the need for interdiction.

There are still not enough people making the leap between Sinead O'Connor's pot parties, and Sinead O'Connor's bipolar disease. The Harvard studies pinpoint the causative effect, but the claim that pot is no more harmful than alcohol still resonates in society.

I'd be for showing middle school and high school students, some graphic videos on the effects of drug addiction as well as what addiction to alcohol does to your liver and your relationships.

Indeed. The reason drug use has declined over 40 years is because the biggest age cohort of those who did the stuff are now either dead, or in their 60-70's. Many younger people of the next generations (and their parents) learned the lessons of what drug addiction means, and avoid the stuff. Others have not learned, nor will they ever.

Sadly, the USA faces a conundrum. We have created a pleasure-seeking, entertainment-addled, irresponsible society where many will indeed chase illegal drugs. We also have a massive, and expensive, welfare, medical and prison public bureaucracy in place that burdens the taxpayer by any temporary increase in addiction. As such, we are stuck - we can't afford to legalize drugs, and we can't afford to keep them illegal.

It's a matter of benefits versus costs. For the fiscal conservative look up the millions spent on the the “war on drugs.” It has been a major cause of pushing back the rights of citizens in search and seizure cases. It has led to a massive growth in Federal authority over the states. The precedent from those cases may be used to push Obama care down our throats as constitutional.

Economically, the war on drugs keeps the price high for drugs and allows the cartels to have monopoly profits.

Drugs are bad, government is worse. Just say no to both.

15
posted on 05/01/2012 1:37:43 PM PDT
by Idaho_Cowboy
(Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. II Corinthians 3:17)

He spent his entire life fighting the drug war, and when he knew his life's end was near, he was willing to call it what it had been - a total waste.

The war has been fought almost exclusively on the supply side, and you have to be a complete idiot to think you can ever win like that. As long as demand exists, all you are doing is raising the price. And of course as the price goes up, so does the profit for those involved.

More profit means more powerful, dangerous, and sophisticated drug cartels. And that is abundant in spades. The hippy couple that brought three pounds of pot across the boarder under the back seat of a Volkswagen bus has been replaced with a well oiled, deadly, multinational criminal enterprise.

The complete and utter damnation of the “war on drugs” is that the average middle school kid can now get pot easier than beer. That sums it up.

Will it limit government or expand it? Once it’s legal the taxpayers have to pay for the healthcare, rehab, and welfare of people who indulge. The government will have to establish a huge agency to deal with regulating and taxing these businesses. Plus, the government will have to pay for the drugs for anyone who can’t afford them. George Soros has promoted drug legalization, because he thought it is the ticket to socialized medicine.

The decades of decline coincide with tougher laws, popular disapproval of drug use, and powerful demand reduction measures such as drug treatment in the criminal justice system and drug testing.

Hopefully noone is dumb enough to believe this. But it is typical Beltway self-congratulatory thinking. I think it would just crush their little pinheads if they knew what the real world effect of their policies were.

There are good reasons to keep some drugs illegal. This article misses most of them. It angers me when it says “pretending smoked marijuana is medicine”
Yet if a pharm company takes out the THC and places it in a pill -Marinol- suddenly it is medicine. As long as some company can make a lot of money off of something it is medicine. I have no problem with expanding the drug war though education. I do have a problem with putting your neighbor in a cage for something that causes no harm to you or society.

25
posted on 05/01/2012 2:09:18 PM PDT
by HenryArmitage
(it was not meant that we should voyage far.)

Rehab is a hell of a lot cheaper than prison and has better outcomes. -as far as limit gov or expand it.. take a look at tobacco and alcohol. It deffinatly increased the paperwork, regulating and certifying producers, but would it be worth it to eliminate large sections of the DEA? I guess I have to choose gov oppression with suitcases or gov oppression with guns, I’m choosing the suitcases.

26
posted on 05/01/2012 2:20:18 PM PDT
by HenryArmitage
(it was not meant that we should voyage far.)

What John Walters (career beltway bureaucrat) conveniently omits is that ENDING THE FEDERAL DRUG WAR WILL NOT LEGALIZE DRUGS. Every state has their own drug laws already on the books, and getting rid of the federal drug war will not remove them.

They're counting on "good conservatives" to infer from all the hype that without the federal drug war there would be anarchy, and be willing to let them keep right on eating away at your constitutional rights, believing that it's the only way to save you from the drugs.

THINK, people!

32
posted on 05/01/2012 2:57:20 PM PDT
by tacticalogic
("Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)

Put undercovers into the supply chain to poison the crap. End of problem. First father of two small business owner with no criminal record that bites it because of it and you can a law to end the prohibition of most substances will get pushed through with his name on it.

33
posted on 05/01/2012 2:57:44 PM PDT
by HenryArmitage
(it was not meant that we should voyage far.)

I was once for the legalization of at least pot, but after watching what it did to my nephew, I realized that the pot that is on the street today is not the same drug we had back in the 70’s or that we read about from the early 17th and 18th centuries.

The pot of the 21st century is an whole new animal and genetically altered to the point of being worse then cocaine.

I no longer favor the legalization of any drug!

Hell, just look at the lives that have been destroyed by Oxycontin, which is basically legalized heroin.

Right now, the game has changed significantly, so that the most dangerous drugs out there are, of course, #1 and still going strong, alcohol. But #2 is rapidly becoming legal, prescription opiates and synthetic opiates.

In fact, there is a profusion of drugs like the Vicodin class (Hydrocodone/paracetamol)(semi-synthetic opioid), as well as the Hydromorphone class, and the Hydromorphinol class, and the Oxymorphone class. Dozens of brand names and generics.

In short, these are effectively “middle class heroin”, at about 20% of the strength of heroin, the balance made up with OTC NSAID pain reliever drugs such as acetaminophen.

But now there is an intent to market 100% purity of these drugs not in combination with other drugs. But as addictive as heroin.

The skyrocketing rate of abuse of these dangerous narcotics has long been so great as to give the federal government an excuse to obtain all prescription records from all citizens, a massive loss of privacy that has yet to show any lessening of the levels of addiction.

It has been pointed out as well that for those addicted to these drugs that they are both so expensive and so relatively controlled that heroin is a reasonable alternative, both cheaper and more widely available.

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